


La Diabola Rossa

by grayspider1974



Category: Vikings - Fandom
Genre: Multi, Sex Toys, Vulgar Language, brutal women, depraved dolphins, sexuality based on Classical Latin texts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-02-18 14:59:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13102608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayspider1974/pseuds/grayspider1974
Summary: Ivar is asked to keep Bjorn's new wife company while his brother is on campaign, and finds out that she's a little too volatile for his liking...and that furthermore, the "pull out" method is a shitty form of birth control!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if there actually is a Catholic saint of People Offended By Loud Sex, but there SHOULD be!   
> The Greeks and Romans believed that a wide range of physical and mental ailments were caused by "hysteria" (a "displaced" or "disordered" womb). Treatments for hysteria included cold baths, flogging, blood-letting and what later Victorian doctors called "womb manipulation". These treatments eventually gave way to modern methods such as psychoanalysis, electroshock therapy and psychoactive drugs, and "hysteria" remained a standard medical diagnosis until the 1960's!  
> Priapus (god of growing things) is my favorite pre-Christian deity, and is best known for giving his name to the condition known as "priapism"

Bjorn Ragnarsson, also known as Iron-Sides and One Big Son of a Bitch had learned long ago that while his own happiness was worth nothing, but that the happiness of those he cared about was worth a great deal, and as he washed lady-juices out of his beard he mused on the fact that (judging by the noises she was making) his second wife was a very happy woman indeed, and he had not seen such a beatific smile on his brother Ivar's face since they had blood-eagled King Aelle. Bellona had locked her long, strong, freckled legs over one of Ivar's shoulders and around his waist like two dappled pythons, and the red-furred monster between her legs had swallowed Ivar's entire hand. Bjorn stooped to pick up the statue of Saint Aethelstan The Perpetually Horrified, now the patron saint of People Who Are Offended By Loud Sex But Are Too Polite To Complain, and set it down on the night-stand next to a delicate Italian cameo of the Virgin and Child and a chunky Shetland marble statue of St Brigid of Kildare resplendent in a diadem and robe decorated with the swastika-like crosses that bore her name and bearing a book and a torch. The sculptor who had carved her had given her a look of stern resolution that reminded Bjorn of his mother, so he set Aethelstan's statue a little behind hers so it looked like she was protecting the little monk, who would probably have fled screaming if he met Bellona, even though they were both Christian...in the course of her education at Kildare, the nuns had subjected Bellona to frequent cold baths and beatings and tied her up to prevent her indulging in certain proclivities that they considered unhealthy, but the baths and beatings had not affected Bellona at all, and being tied up only taught her how to escape. His mother had been right...Bellona was a nasty girl, but Bjorn had a fondness for nasty girls which he shared with his youngest brother Ivar. "I told you this would make her happy," he said "and look...you can fit your whole hand in her minge. I can only fit three fingers in there." He held up a hand that (while the nails were impeccably clean and well trimmed) was the size of a small ham. "I know she's had three babies, but nobody wants my ungainly mitts crammed up inside such a sensitive area." He reached over and ruffled Ivar's hair.  
"Don't do that!" said Ivar "It feels...weird..."  
Bjorn grinned and kissed Ivar's forehead as Bellona's back arched. Her breathing quickened, and her big, black seal eyes stared up into Ivar's. "Bellona loves us both, you know," Bjorn said as his Fun Wife began to thrash violently. "She trusts you more than anyone else. You make her happy, which is why I want you to stay with her while Thorunn and I are away on business in Sicily. Bellona is a very special girl, and her needs can become...problematic..." One of Bellona's long, webbed hands crept down Ivar's back and very gently probed his anus. Ivar's cock was a bit smaller than his thumb, and one of his testicles had not descended, so he could not please a woman with it, but it stiffened thanks to Bellona's probing, and he spewed angry little gimp sperm on Bellona's belly and then suddenly started to weep.  
"Are you giving me permission to fist-fuck your wife?" Ivar said once he managed to control himself.  
"She also likes cunnilingus and I've given her a fairly extensive collection of dildoes," said Bjorn "and I expect you to please her in any way that suits you both while I am away. She gets...irritable...when she's sexually frustrated. The last time I left her alone for a month, she sacked Pisa, and it was not pretty!"  
Bellona finally climaxed with a wail that suggested that (in addition to being one-sixteenth Selkie) she was also part banshee. Ivar then gently extracted his hand, muttering that his fingers were cramping up, sniffed the ooze that coated them and happily curled up and started licking the juices from his hand.  
"Frig! I'm as hard as a rock again..." Bjorn said as his half-brother and his second wife went to sleep in each other's arms beside him. His first wife had wanted to make it an early night and had put on her ear-plugs and her sleeping-mask, rolled herself in a quilt and done her best to impersonate a bolster and was snoring quietly. "Thorunn...hey, Thorunn..." he whispered in her ear, gently shaking her. Bjorn carefully removed his first wife's mask. Even with her scars and stretch marks, Thorunn was an uncommonly beautiful woman.  
"Hunnugugh...oh, Bjorn!" said Thorunn, as Bjorn nuzzled her scarred face. "I'm not up for kinky shit tonight, Bjorn!" said Thorunn. "We both need to get up early tomorrow."  
"I can't sleep," said Bjorn. "I'm too horny. I'm like that statue of Priapus that our gardener keeps in his shed!"  
"You've got to be fucking with me!" said Thorunn.  
Bjorn beamed, and licked Thorunn's face and neck. "No, but I want to be!"  
Thorunn smiled, stretched like a cat and yawned. "We'll have to be quiet," she said. "Let sleeping gimps lie..."   
"Don't worry, he's all tuckered out...I think..." said Bjorn. He glanced over at the statue of St. Aethelstan on the bedside table. "I'm sorry Aethelstan...you're in for a long night!"


	2. La Dolce Vita

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ivar experiences the sweet life for a time...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depictions of women wearing what appear to be strap-ons appear in late Neolithic cave paintings, and they were evidently quite popular in Greece and Rome during the Classical and Byzantine periods, and are described in detail in the Kama Sutra as well.   
> The "siesta" or seventh-hour nap was a widespread custom throughout the former Roman Empire.  
> Lavondyss Tir-na-Fuin was a lost city similar to Atlantis...a legend that might be verified because there were once extensive tracts of land along the coast of Britain that were above sea-level during the Bronze Age but are now under water.

After a week or so, Ivar began to notice two things. The first was that he was starting to gain weight because Byzantine food was awesome, and like many people used to a cold climate, he would chow down prodigiously whenever food was plentiful and good. The second was that he was quite possibly in love with his brother's Fun Wife, even though he knew full well that he could not satisfy a woman in the usual way and that it would be a bad idea to inflict angry, gimpy junior versions of himself on the world. Bellona's children were near-perfect ginger-haired cherubs, but their half-sister from another union was blind as the Seer and had the same peculiar deformity as her uncle Ivar to boot. Aino was a sweet little girl when she wasn't biting people, and Bellona had taken her in as one of her own,but Ivar did not wish to burden any more children with a life as painful as his own, so he made Bellona happy in other ways that Bjorn had explained did not technically count as sex according to the Bible. Indeed, Ivar discovered that his half-brother's private life exceeded his own wildest imagination. He let Bellona use some of her smaller dildoes on him, and found that once his anus had loosened up he enjoyed it considerably more than he had the times that his late, unlamented full brother Sigurd had held Ivar down and stuck his thumb in his rectum. However, Ivar was reluctant to let Bellona try some of her other peculiar toys on him, because he had already experienced being tied up and having a sack pulled over his head and had not liked it very much, and the catalbus that Bellona used to flog her husband was just plain terrifying, as was the large and knobbly strap-on that Bjorn had had made for his wife by some of the finest harness-makers in Constantinople. The fact that the nasty thing had been in Bjorn's anus would have made being penetrated by it almost as unappealing as being shtupped by Bjorn, and it would probably hurt like Hell too,but fortunately Bellona preferred being eaten out, and as such Ivar started most days by chowing down on her, then washing his face and removing all telltale ginger hairs from his teeth before chowing down again on breakfast with Bellona and her children, followed by a nice swim and then lunch and a nice nap during the seventh hour of the day. The rest of the day was given over to various pursuits, which because the people who owed Ivar money had been unusually prompt at paying up usually consisted of playing chess and working on Ivar's literacy skills, save for the weekly races at the Hippodrome, where Bjorn and Thorunn had reserved seats near the box reserved for the Emperor Basil and the Imperial Princess Zoe, who was a steely-eyed girl in her early teens who always addressed Ivar as "Killer" and utterly terrified him. Then there were the dinner parties....as the pretty, eccentric wife of a wealthy foreign businessman, Bellona was invited to an appalling number of dinner parties hosted by decrepit, goatish aristocrats and their horrendous wives. Ivar found these affairs incredibly dull, as his taste in entertainment tended more towards cock fights and gambling, but because it would be terribly insulting if La Bella Brittania did not show up decked in heavy red gold jewellery crafted in Lavondyss Tir-na-Fuin when the ancestors of Plato had been simple shepherds living in thatched huts, so Bellona went and played the role of an exotic beauty from the land of the barbarous Britons more for a laugh than for any other reason, and Ivar went with her to keep some of the more lecherous old aristocrats at bay. As such, they had tremendous fun until one afternoon Ivar was woken from his siesta by screams. Bellona was La Bella Brittania most of the time, but in certain circumstances she would become La Diabola Rossa, and when she did it was UGLY.


	3. Vae Victis!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bellona goes from being La Bella Brittania to being La Diabola Rossa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the creators of Vikings have briefly put a catamite on the show, I think it's safe to point out that the Norse didn't talk much about same-sex relationships for reasons best explained by Dr. Jackson Crawford in his Youtube lecture Forbidden Words, and in the cultures that DID talk about such things (which include the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and later Ottoman Empires as well as much of North Africa and the Orient) they generally did not follow the modern pattern of two consenting adults of more or less equal status sharing a bed! Instead, many men kept catamites (usually eunuchs or boys that today would be considered too young to give legal consent) alongside their wives and concubines, and in a polygamous society it was not unknown for co-wives to diddle each other...or if they were disinclined to do so, a slave girl who was usually the lady's "ornatrix" (hair dresser and makeup artist) would do it. Like actors and gladiators, to be a catamite or an ornatrix was considered a "profession infames" (shitty job) and had even less social status than being a manual labourer, and they were often quite brutally treated. The practice was officially abolished when the Ottoman Empire was replaced by a modern republic which instituted age of consent and anti-slavery laws, though an illicit slave trade still persists in some parts of the world. I don't say this to offend or denigrate anybody...I just REALLY like history!  
> In Latin (as with its modern Italian cognate "paisan") the term "pagan" meant a rube or an uneducated rural person, and had nothing to do with religion at all  
> Krakens are one of my favorite cryptozoa...they were long believed to be mythical, but one was discovered on the coast of New Zealand in 2001.

"Huge was she and terrible, with a voice like a brazen trumpet and hair like a river of fire..." was how Bellona's ancestress who started the Iceni Revolt and sacked London had been described, and when Bellona was angry there was a distinct family resemblance. Ivar woke that afternoon to see her stalking a somewhat smaller woman through the dappled shade of the villa's garden, armed with her catalbus and snarling like a jungle cat. She grabbed the other girl by her curly dark hair and hissed "Tu a ferro, ferro puta et puella vulgare..." and began dragging her back towards the house, then changed her mind and started beating the other girl on the spot. Ivar recognised her victim as her ornatrix and lady's maid, a small but sturdy woman who answered to the name Rhodopsis.  
"What in Frig's name is going on?" he asked one of the gardeners who kept the grounds of Bjorn's villa from turning into a wilderness. The man's name was Achilles, and Ivar trusted him because he was like a Greek version of Floki, and maintained a shrine to Priapus in his garden shed.  
"I think the Domina caught Rhodie trying out one of her dildoes," said Achilles.  
"That's as disgusting as using someone's toothbrush..." said Ivar "Shame on her, but..." They had slaves back in Norway, and it was not uncommon to beat them. In fact, Ivar had nearly throttled one of his mother's thralls who had ridiculed his small, malformed penis, but that whip that Bellona was flogging her girl with was a truly brutal instrument, and while Ivar was starting to get an erection from watching Bellona beat the little slut's backside bloody, he had himself been the victim of too many savage beatings to avoid feeling a twinge of sympathy for her. Indeed, Bellona sometimes reminded him of Bjorn's big-haired bitch of a mother. One of the cooks appeared from the kitchen with a large, freshly peeled ginger root.  
"You might want to leave now," said Achilles. "The Domina is about to ginger her handmaiden. It will not be a pretty sight!"  
"Um..." said Ivar "I don't understand..."  
"She's going to take that ginger root and stick it where the sun don't shine. I've heard it's excruciating, but I wouldn't know 'cos I'm a good boy."  
Ivar's jaw dropped. He pushed it back into place with his hand, just before Bellona spotted him and beckoned.  
"Hold the puta's feet!" she snapped.  
Ivar hesitated, but a sick, cringing desire to obey his brother's wife washed over him. Half of Ivar wanted to do so because he had never been so turned on, and the other half simply wished to avoid having the wrath of La Diabola Rossa turned on him. His face, however was fixed in a broad, shit-eating grin as Rhodie's anguished wails grated his ears. Then he was struck by an especially cruel impulse, and started unlacing his pants. He grabbed Rhodie by her curly locks and shoved his angry little murder-boner in her face and snarled "Suck my cock, bitch!" as he shot his wad in her face.  
Bellona smiled down at Ivar and purred "Vae victis!" like a proud mama. It was one Latin phrase that he understood, for it meant "Woe to the fallen!" and as Rhodopsis stood up with tears and snot and ejaculate running down her face, Ivar grinned, but he also felt sickened by what he had done. Woe to the fallen indeed!

The rest of the day passed quietly, and over dinner Ivar mused that while Bellona was gorgeous, educated, intelligent, horny as a mink and a devoted mother she was also a brutal bitch, and she really did remind him of Lagertha, who had murdered Ivar's mother and brutalized even her own son. He picked at his meal, which was some sort of elegant little bird impaled on skewers and broiled over a wood fire, bathed in some sort of sticky sauce redolent of...ginger. He suddenly vomited, and Rhodopsis (who despite her ordeal still had to wait on her Domina at table) ran to get a mop and bucket. Bellona felt Ivar's forehead and checked his pulse. "You should go to bed early," she said "and if you're still feeling ill in the morning we should call a physician." After he had cleaned himself up, Ivar crawled into bed. The sheets were pleasantly cool against his bare skin. The statue of St. Aethelstan the Perpetually Horrified seemed to look at him with an expression of disgust. He had no firm memory of the man, other than that Floki had described him as a sly little shit-disturber. Ivar knew that he himself was a shit-disturber, so he felt a weird sort of kinship to the erstwhile monk.  
"He'd probably run away screaming if he met Bellona, even if they're both Christians," Ivar thought. Indeed, the fact that Bellona had spent much of her formative years being tied up and beaten by nuns might explain her violent disposition. He looked over to where she slept, curled up like a leopardess after a long hunt. Beautiful she was and terrible, like an army with banners, and knowing that she was capable of beating another girl bloody and then raping her with an aromatic root did not change the fact that Ivar could not stop looking at her until he felt the urge to urinate. The villa had an indoor toilet that still worked despite the fact that the plumbing dated back to the reign of the emperor Constantine. Such things as the toilet (which had a constant stream of running water under it) and the large oval bathtub carved from a single block of green marble that could be filled on a whim with either piping hot or icy cold water simply by turning a gold-plated tap were all wonderful and strange to Ivar, who was used to outdoor privies and saunas. He urinated, then washed his hands and drank from the bathtub tap because he'd been warned not to drink from the toilet even though all the water flowed from the same spring, but as he was doing so Ivar was struck on the back of the head, and as he tried to turn around a bag was put over his head.  
"Hullo, Gimp!" someone hissed in his ear. "You're going to wish your Momma strangled you at birth..." At first, Ivar thought it was Sigurd Snake In The Eye, his late, unlamented ass-raping brother. Then Ivar realized that it was a girl who had just spoken, and he grinned inside the sack. "Hullo, Rhodie!" He felt something tear into his back, and guessed that Rhodopsis had stolen her mistress's catalbus. "Bellona's gonna tear you apart for this," he said. "Go ahead and beat me, bitch...I can handle a lot of pain!" The whip cut him again. "Have you even thought out why you're doing this?" he asked. "I didn't beat you, and I only held your feet and beat off in your face because I did not want Bellona to turn her wrath on me. You should not have fucked with her...ow...dildoes! That's worse than using someone's...ow...toothbrush..."  
"I love Domina Bellona," Rhodopsis cried "Diddling her should be my job, but when I first offered her pleasure she called me 'una fero pagan puta, et cervixa maladore!' Then you came along, with your big eyes and your big lies. You're a lecherous cripple and a no-good gigolo!"  
"I'm a lecher and a cripple all right," said Ivar "but I'm not a gigolo because I don't get paid. I just like eating minge. You, on the other hand really are an ugly redneck whore ad a smelly cunt." He had fought the urge to scream, but then something was inserted in his rectum that stung like a motherfucker, and he learned what it was like to be gingered. "OH YOU BITCH! YOU CUNT-LICKING BITCH!" His yell was interrupted by an inarticulate roar, screams, and repeated cracking sounds, and as Ivar blacked out he heard the words "Vae victis, cunningulista miserare...te amo Bjorn, et te amo Ivar. Te amo tua NON!" 

Ivar woke to find an aedile sitting beside his bed. Evidently someone (most likely the Seer) had had the presence of mind to call the police. The cop smirked a bit, but his expression was not unkind as he offered Ivar a coffee and a baklava, and said "Relax, Big Shooter. You've had a rough night, but the crazy Celt took off just as we got here. A great big kraken rose out of the sea and she rode off on it."  
"She was protecting me," said Ivar. "It was her bitch maid who tried to rape me with an aromatic root..."  
An extremely elderly woman sat on the opposite side of Ivar's bed. "Hullo, Louhi..." Ivar said "What the fuck happened last night?"  
"Bellona's humours waxed from sanguine to choleric," said Louhi "due to the influence of the full moon. When that happens, the wisest thing is to immerse the patient in cold water. After she saved you from her maid, she dove into the sea and rode off on a kraken, presumably to find Bjorn."  
"A kraken?" Ivar asked. "I always thought those were mythical!"  
"So did I," said Louhi. "But evidently they're real."  
"What happened to Rhodopsis?" Ivar asked. "Did Bellona kill her?"  
"No," said Louhi. "She merely dislocated her girl's shoulder, knocked out most of her teeth and beat her savagely with a religious statue...the little wooden one of the man with his hands over his ears and a horrified expression..."  
"That would be Saint Aethelstan the Perpetually Horrified," said Ivar. "He just got canonized."   
"Ah," said Louhi. "Well she's lucky it wasn't that big green marble one, or her injuries would be fatal. Slaves who strike members of their master's family are normally put to death anyway, but I found a better use for her."  
"What, did you sell her to the Russians?" Ivar asked.  
"No, no..." said Louhi. "She's on a boat to Alexandria. Hvitserk needs skilled hairdressers for his wig-making enterprise, and talents like hers should not go to waste!"


	4. La Domina est Mobile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bjorn Ironside returns from campaign to find his second wife fled, his son drinking dolphin milk and half his villa overrun with Armenian hill folk.

The lacerations on Ivar's back were not yet fully healed when his half brother Bjorn Ragnarsson (also known as Ironside, Behemoth, and One Big Son of a Bitch) returned two weeks later than he was supposed to have arrived and in a terrible, icy rage. "Where's my wife?" he asked in a deceptively quiet voice "and why has a large Armenian family moved into the east wing of my villa?"  
Ivar lay on his stomach, gritting his teeth as Louhi swabbed his mangled back with Four Thieves Vinegar. "She's standing next to you" he said as nonchalantly as he could "and as for the Kardashians...well, half your villa was standing vacant, and I figured that renting it out would be a good way to make a bit of money. I've also started selling the oil from your grove and the wine from your vineyard..."  
Bjorn grabbed the sponge and dragged it across his half-brother's back, deliberately rubbing much harder than Louhi had done "I meant my other wife...tall lady, red hair, freckles, a bit of an underbite, hot temper..."  
Ivar nearly squealed "Don't do that, it hurts! At any rate she...ow...rode off on a kraken three weeks ago."  
"I thought those were mythical," said Bjorn.  
"Evidently, they're not! said Ivar "and when Bellona left, I thought she was headed to Sicily to look for you. What took you so long?"  
"I had to deal with a lot of angry Sicilians," said Bjorn. "They are not an easy people to subjugate. I also made the mistake of ordering carpaccio at a dodgy bistro, and I was sick for a week."   
Thorunn shuddered. "They call him Ironside, but he does not have a cast iron stomach. At any rate, Bellona's gone and half the villa is overrun with Armenian hill folk..."  
"They're really very nice once you get to know them..." said Ivar.  
"...and sweet Frig, what did Bellona do to you?" Thorunn asked "Your back looks like...ewww..."  
"It looks like that carpaccio I ate, after it came back up again," said Bjorn. "Really, it does!"  
"Bellona saved my life," said Ivar. "I was being violated with an aromatic root by a scorned hairdresser. Then Bellona took off to look for you."  
Thorunn gave her husband a Meaningful Look, and Bjorn's silent woebegone expression answered her question. "And the children?" they asked in unison.  
"They're safe," Ivar said. "Barack's aunt Sadie is looking after them...and Messalina, too. Your youngest is probably down at the cove being fed as we speak."  
"So I leave you in charge for a month, and find Bellona fled, my villa overrun with Kardashians, and my son being suckled by a sea creature?" Bjorn asked. "You must understand why I am extremely angry right now!"  
"Don't forget that I was savagely beaten and violated with a seasoning..."said Ivar "Ow...I asked you to stop that!"  
"What do you propose to do, then?" Bjorn asked. He sat down beside Ivar on the bed, which groaned alarmingly, and looked at a clay bowl of figs and goat cheese sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and nuts and drizzled with honey that had been intended for Ivar's lunch but which Ivar had not been able to finish, then grabbed the bowl and shoved a handful of it in his mouth. After a few moments of dedicated chewing, he said. "One thing for certain, Ivar...the first chance we get we are going to kick out the Kardashians. After that, somebody's got to look for Bellona, while you stay here and sort out your mess."  
Thorunn sighed. "If there's anyone who knows how to look for a runaway, it's me, so I'll do it."  
Bjorn shoved about a third of Ivar's lunch in his mouth, and continued chewing. "Damn right," he said after a while. "I'm utterly hopeless at sorting out what goes through women's minds, and young Ivar here is but an innocent youth still wet behind the ears and smelling of mother's milk...or has Messalina been suckling you as well, Ivar?"  
"I ain't tellin'," said Ivar.  
"So the only person who understands the mind of a woman is another woman," said Thorunn. She reached down and grabbed the sponge, dipped it in the bowl of Four Thieves Vinegar and wrung it out, and applied it to Ivar's back. Ivar yelped in pain. "Squeal, piggy...squeal!" Thorunn whispered under her breath.


	5. Bellona Fugit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the search for the fugitive second wife ensues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name Xena literally means "strange woman," whereas "Flavia" and "Fulvia" mean "blond" and "curly"

Over the next mont, Thorunn enlisted the aid of all the Varangians who had been hired out across the Aegean, and two private detectives...a phelegmatic Rus whose name was Leibowski but who called himself the Dude and the gaunt-faced Liam son of Nee who had had no success finding his own daughter but had a rare talent for finding other people's kin. One lead that had seemed promising at first had dead-ended when tales of a strange woman who was very tall and had a ferocious disposition had led the Brute Squad to a rather disagreeable tribad named Xena.There were reports of what could have been either the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse or the goddess Aphrodite off the coast of Cyprus, and fearsome tales of a red-haired pirate queen who (like that Xena woman) turned out to be someone else.  
"Perhaps Bellona does not want to be found," said Bjorn. "You did the same thing to me." He was standing chest deep in the water holding his son Eric in his arms while Aino, Flavia and Fulvia paddled about. "I learned that I did not really know what I had lost until you were gone."Thorunn noted ruefully that unlike her own daughter, Bellona's brood were thriving, and even blind Aino was flourishing. "That, and the importance of keeping it in my pants!"  
"You're not wearing any pants!" said Thorunn.  
"True," said Bjorn "But you know what I mean. This is a fiasco...exactly how easy is it to lose a large Caledonian woman with red hair riding a giant cephalopod?"  
"Who knows what lurks in the vast depths of the cold and mighty sea?" The Seer made his way down the steps to the beach with considerable dexterity for a man who was past sixty and (like his great-granddaughter Aino) completely anoptic. As always he was clad in black wool despite the Mediterranean heat, and he would have looked much more mystical and oracular if he was not sipping from a tall glass of pomegranate juice mixed with honey and snow carted down from the mountains. Messalina cackled as if in greeting. "Of course YOU know, my dear...but most of us don't speak cetacean! That is something known only to the Selkie folk."  
Messalina chattered excitedly. "I think she's trying to say that if you find another Selkie to translate for her, she can tell you were Bellona is," Aino chipped in. She was only five and seldom spoke but when she did talk Aino spoke in a curiously adult way that frightened Thorunn a little. Aino's pale blonde bangs veiled half her eyeless face, and her sharp little teeth were bared in a grin.  
"Well, that makes sense," said the Seer.

The office of Liam, son of Nee also served as his home, and was crammed with papers relating to cases of girls or women who had been abducted or ran away. It stank of boiled cabbage and hopelessness, and the gaunt old man threw up his hands and said "Some women just don't WANT to be found!"  
"But do you speak cetacean?" Thorunn asked.  
Liam rummaged through his papers and found a half-empty bottle of Glen Nepenthe and poured himself a shot, then drank it and nodded. "I don't want to be paid in money, though. If I help you find the lady, just take me back home to die in County Angst. This city sickens me, and I'm done for all this. I don't think my Moira wants to be found."His gaunt face creased with grief, but he did not weep. Solemnly and silently, Bjorn patted the old Hibernian on his back.

The Stella Libertas set sail that afternoon, with Messalina and her pod leading the way. Ivar was told to stay behind and manage the accounts of the Brute Squad, because he was actually quite good at handling paperwork and had learned to control his periodic bouts of office rage. Thorunn was flabbergasted when the dolphins led her by a rather circuitous route back to Sicily, where the citizens of Messina were recovering from a heavy siege that she and Bjorn had waged less than a month ago, and the trattoria that had served Bjorn a near fatal plate of carpaccio was still a smoking ruin as she walked past it to another eatery down the street, where a squat, muscular man was putting the final touches on a new mural overtop an older, faded mural, and an elderly lady was dumping something in a kettle of boiling oil in the open kitchen opposite the mural, which depicted a gorgeous naked woman with long red hair rising from the waves on the back of a kraken. The old lady glowered at Thorunn and flipped her fingers under her chin. "Maladetta! Maladetta!" she croaked. "I spit in your eye!"  
"Pax, Mama!" said Stallone, who owned this establishment. "The Norsemen came to terms with the capo, and spared us."  
"But not the Trattoria Mussolini down the street!" said the old lady.  
"They did us a favor by torching that shithole," said her son. "We didn't need the competition, and Mussolini kinda deserved it for being open on Sunday." He grinned. "Ave, Lady Scarface....I remember you well. Is your hubby up to his old tricks?"  
"We are looking for a missing woman," Thorunn said. "She looks an awful lot like the lady in your mural. I'm glad you decided to cover over the other one...it was a bit tasteless."  
"Oh, her...yeah...she came ashore a week ago--like Aphrodite rising from the sea--and talked a bit with Mama, who's the best benedetta in all Sicily." Whatever had been sizzling away in the deep fat fryer was hoisted out and set aside to drain. "Tell Lady Scarface what you told the Lady of the Waves, Mama."  
Mama Stallone raised her head. She was a small woman who looked as though she had been sun-dried, but Thorunn knew that "benedetta" meant the same as "volva" or "witch," and such women were not to be trifled with.  
"The Lady of the Waves wished me to inspect her and predict the sex of her child. I told her she would birth a beautiful boy with fine black hair and blue eyes just like his Papa. Here...mangia! Mangia! The kraken left us all a present by spawning in the harbour, and now there's so much calamari that we must practically give it away!" She handed Thorunn a basket of something deep fried and crispy.  
"But Bjorn doesn't have black hair," Thorunn said to Liam. "His hair is as blond as butter..." She set the basket of calamari down to cool for a bit.   
Liam sprinkled the squid with lemon and sea salt and spread his hands "Some women don't want to be found," he said. "If she's been playing pattycake with Baby Brother Mac Nasty Britches, then I don't blame her for running off!"  
'I used to change Ivar's diapers," said Thorunn. He's only got one testicle, and a prick the size of my thumb!"  
"That only goes to prove what someone can do if they're not careful," said Liam son of Nee. "Back home in County Angst a priest got a woman pregnant just by looking at her tush. It was a terrible scandal." As he ordered two pints of beer, Thorunn silently thanked Frig that she was not so fertile, given the way that Ragnar's moony priest (now canonized as Saint Aethelstan the Perpetually Horrified) used to stare at her behind, as head many other men in Kattegat. In fact, Bjorn had later told her that her tush had always been her best feature even before her face had been messed up.  
"Well, here's to the new arrival," said Liam son of Nee. "Slainte ba!"


	6. Bjorn et Thorunn Pursuant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thorunn and Company continue seeking for a large, red-haired Caledonian woman riding a giant cephalopod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter refers to two previous stories of mine, Nautical Nonsense and Ivar's Game. I also have personal experience with large Northern European men who get morose when they drink!

After further consultation with Hadrian and a younger male named Antinous that the dolphin pod had elected to go with the Stella Libertas, Thorunn surmised that Bellona might have returned to her relatives in Caledonia, and quietly explained the situation to Bjorn, who had been quietly sitting in the bow of the Stella Libertas the whole time marinating his liver in hooch and muttering to himself. He stared at his first wife silently for a second or two, then said quite calmly. "That can't be true. The one time that they tried, Ivar pulled out."  
"So they did try at least once?" Thorunn asked.  
Bjorn nodded. "I was there, and so were Messalina and her pod, and a boatload of Greek sailors showed up unexpectedly at the end. Their cheering put Ivar off."  
"Ew," said Thorunn. "And I thought it was bad when we caught Floki perving on us! You and Ivar are a pair of..."  
"Filthy Mac Nastybritches!" said Liam son of Nee. "Shame on you, treating a nice Caledonian girl like that!"  
"It was her idea!" said Bjorn. "She's...well, you thinks the nuns at Kildare would have beat it out of her, but they only made her worse!"  
Liam son of Nee blinked. He had two sets of eyelids, like a seal. "It's still a mortal sin," he said "and you are a pervert!"  
"Nonetheless," said Bjorn. "we should make Gibraltar in a week, and then on to Caledonia. Maybe we'll drop by Rouen and see how Uncle Rollo is doing, but with fair weather and good fortune we should reach Port Mackenzie in a month, and after that we'll drop you off in County Angst. What's Hibernia like, anyway? I've never been there."  
"It's damp and mossy and extremely fertile," said Liam son of Nee "as are many of the women."

"Thorunn, Thorunn..." said Bjorn. "I'm sorry, Thorunn, I ruined your life..." Bjorn's breath stank of usquae beatha, and while Thorunn rather liked cuddling up to her husband's warm, muscular bulk she did not like it when he was drunk off his ass, because alcohol turned Bjorn into a weepy, whiny wuss and made him no fun in bed. "I ruined your life, and that of every woman I've slept with..." There was in fact close to a hundred women whose names Bjorn remembered that he felt he'd wronged, and a few he may have forgotten about, and when he was in his cups Bjorn would rattle off their names one after the other and bawl piteously for his sins. He was not quite as handsome as he had been when they first met, because his teeth had been chipped, his once marble-like skin was covered in tattoos that had warped and faded, and he was getting a little fat again. "I ruined Ivar's life too..." he slurred. "I didn't pay attention to the things Sigurd did to him, and I stood by when my mother killed his mother...and I'll admit that even though Queen Asslaug was a miserable cunt, she did not deserve to die like that...'  
"Queen Asslaug manumitted me so I could marry you," said Thorunn "and she never mistreated me."  
Bjorn nodded. "I must give her credit for that," he said "but Ivar...he's a vicious little shit disturber, but he's got every reason in the world to be the way he is. I corrupted him, my own baby brother. I thought it would make him happy, and it certainly made Bellona happy for a time..." Bjorn was weeping, and Thorunn prepared herself for a long night curled together in a berth that was a bit too short for Bjorn and had a thin, lumpy mattress, listening to her husband bewail his sins but at that moment there was a knock at the cabin door, and Liam son of Nee poked his head through when she opened it. "'Scuse me, Captain" he said. "But we've sighted krakens...six of them coming in off the Hibernian Strait. I think you better come and see this!"2


	7. Britons Barbares et Ballistae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thorunn and Company are met by several boatloads of hairy, cantankerous Caledonians with extremely large ballistae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stereotype of the Celts being a particularly hairy and belligerent people goes back to the ancient Romans, who referred to us as "Britons barbares" and "Gauls comites" among other things. It is entirely based in truth....we're a bunch of hairy bastards!  
> "Ach y fy!" is Welsh, rather than Gaelic and means more or less the same as "Oy vey!"

William Lyon Mackenzie, King of the Islands, the Highlands and the contested bit along Hadrian's Wall stood in the bow of his flagship the Megara in full Caledonian battle dress, which is to say he was naked as a jaybird except for blue war paint and a heavy gold torque around his neck though like many Scots he was covered in so much thick ginger body hair that it made little difference whether he was clothed or not. He was flanked by his brother the Abbot of Iona who stood on a barrel to compensate for the fact that he was less than five feet tall, and by a fat, wimpled figure who had recently been elected the Prioress of St. Benedict's on Cumberbach, and was screaming at the Stella Libertas through a bull-horn as a dozen massive ballistae were trained on her hull. They were in fact surrounded by several such craft, and the sea was a mass of writhing tentacles. "YOU PERVERT!" screamed William Lyon Mackenzie "REPROBATE! VILE, UNSPEAKABLE HEATHEN!"  
"I think he means you," said Thorunn. "and from the sound of things your father-in-law is pissed. I can't reason with him..."  
"Could you help me with my trousers?" asked Bjorn "I'm too drunk to lace them up."  
Thorunn helped her husband with his pants, and he shambled out onto the deck. "Hullo," he said. "I'm looking for my second wife. I suppose you've seen her."  
"ARSEHOLE! IDIOT! SON OF A BITCH!" King William continued to rant. "I LET MY DAUGHTER MARRY YOU IN GOOD FAITH, AND YOU WHORE HER OUT LIKE SOME...ARGH! ACH Y FY!" He suddenly lapsed into his native language, which Bjorn had never been able to learn much of because Bellona spoke good Norwegian and the Latin spoken by the educated classes of more civilized lands, but Gaelic had a sibilant, almost reptilian quality that made it an excellent language to swear in. After his father-in-law had run out of steam, Bjorn said quietly "I'm sorry. It made Bellona very happy, and I love her...and besides, I'm a faithless son of a bitch. Why should I expect Bellona to be faithful to me?   
"WITH YOUR GIMP ARSEHOLE OF A BROTHER?" yelled back King William. Then the small, fat nun grabbed the bull-horn from his hands  
"YOU'RE JUST LUCKY YOU DIDN'T GIVE THEM BOTH THE CLAP!" yelled Sister Peg. "AND REALLY...LETTING IVAR BREED WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA! YOU ARE AN IRRESPONSIBLE PIECE OF SHIT, BJORN IRONSIDE!"  
Bjorn hung his head. "That I am, Ma'am. I was and always will be a huge, steaming turd."  
Thorunn hugged him "No, you're not. If you were you would never admit to it."  
"ALL RIGHT!" shouted Bjorn. His stentorian voice was loud enough that he did not need a bull-horn. "I ACCEPT FULL RESPONSIBILITY, EVEN IF IT'S NOT MINE, AND EVEN IF IT IS A HERMAPHRODITE WITH FLIPPERS! IF IT COMES FROM BELLONA'S BELLY, I ACCEPT THIS CHILD! MEA CULPA! MEA CULPA! MEA MAXIMA CULPA!" He turned, staggered a bit and leaned on Thorunn's shoulders. "I should have done the same for Little Sigi...but I just did not understand what I had until it was gone." Then he leaned over the rail and threw up. "I think I better go back to my berth," he said at last.   
"I'll make you some ginger tea," said Thorunn "and for Frigg's sake I hope you didn't get food poisoning again!"

Thorunn lay sandwiched between the warm, muscular bulk of her husband and the warm, muscular bulk that was Bellona and sniffed her fingers. Bellona's minge was an intimidating red-furred monster that had swallowed Thorunn's hand, but her juices did not smell as fishy as one might expect from a woman who spent so much time in and around the ocean. It was extremely crowded in their berth and her face was mashed against her co-wife's bosom that was already swollen with milk and there was something already stirring inside Bellona's belly, but for the time being she and Bjorn were both slumbering blissfully in a python-like tangle of limbs that Thorunn could not escape from without waking them both, so she lay between them and considered how the day had gone. Bjorn's terrible upset stomach had settled down by sunrise, and when the walls of St. Benedicts on the banks of the Cumberbach appeared, he let out a happy roar, and almost before the outrigger was moored he had waded up onto the shore and was striding purposefully towards a field where a very tall lady in the habit of a novice was irritably weeding turnips. As soon as she saw him coming, Bellona hiked up her skirts in a truly un-nunlike fashion and took to her heels. She had good, long strong legs and could run quite fast but Bjorn was faster, and he grabbed her by her waist and slung her over his shoulder. By the time he got back to the outrigger, his Fun Wife had sworn at him in Norwegian and Latin and then lapsed into her native language.  
"What does 'pogue ma hone' mean?" he asked Liam, son of Nee.  
"It means 'kiss my arse!'" said Liam.   
Bjorn chortled and kissed Bellona's behind.  
Then Liam son of Nee spotted another novice who was trying to beat a hasty retreat. "MOIRA!" he shouted. "YOU GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" The other novice turned. Like Liam and Bellona, she had eyes like a seal and she regarded the old Hibernian with dismay. "Ever since that fiasco with Father Ted your mother has been worried sick about you!'' shouted Liam. "I look all over Europe for you, and yet here you are in the land of the filthy Sassenach, of all places! Oh the heartbreak! Oh, the calamity! Oh, the shame..."  
"Stuff it, Daddy," Moira said. "You're worse than Mummy, and the way you carry on all the time is the reason why I ran away!" She turned to leave, but halted.   
"I'm just glad to know you're safe," said Liam son of Nee, and then they both burst into tears and embraced.   
Bjorn rubbed Bellona's legs. She giggled and pulled his hair. Then he, she and Thorunn rowed out to the Stella Libertas and crawled back into their berth. Bjorn then proceeded to make love to his second wife, but he was a bit out of practice and had treated his hangover with the proverbial hair of the dog he did not last as long as he usually did. "Wait a bit," he said, and from the sea-chest in which his belongings were stowed he lifted a smaller box padded in fine red leather which contained a device which involved a lot of straps and buckles and a rather large and accurate representation of a penis carved from ivory.   
"You brought that nasty thing all the way from Constantinople?" Thorunn asked "I suppose you want one of us to use it on you!"  
"I was hoping one of you would use it on the other, seeing as I am presently as boneless as Ivar," Bjorn said ruefully. "I'll just watch."  
Bellona snickered in a rather unladylike fashion, wrapped her powerful, freckled limbs about Thorunn and whispered "Te amo tu!" in her ear.  
"I think I'd like it better if we just fingered each other," said Thorunn.  
"If that is what makes both of you happy...." said Bjorn as he settled in contentedly to watch.


	8. La Vida Loca

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bjorn and Thorunn return with Bellona in tow and give Ivar a hard time, then are informed of his latest travel plans, while the dolphins swim around discussing the peculiarities of human mating rituals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon was written at about the same time as the Codex Regius and other early Norse Sagas, and offers a glimpse of a society that was radically different from that of the Norse. It is (to use a term that the author herself would have used "ito, ito okashi" (very, very charming) and well worth reading!  
> At no point in the show do they explain the meaning of "Lothbrook" (hairy pants) or show Ragnar wearing the fur trousers that inspired that nickname...however, the name made me think of another vile scourge of the seas whose theme song is sung to a tune that is centuries old!  
> I don't really know how old the legend of Kichu-sakai Onna (Cut-faced Girl) is, but it is supposedly ancient, and still popular in Japan and Korea

A few months after the departure of the Stella Libertas, Ivar the Boneless lay on his stomach on top of an inflated wineskin in the middle of Bellona's Bay, sipping a lime granita and teaches his nieces and nephew the words to an inane little ditty. "He sails in a longboat across the wide sea..." he sang, and they would answer:  
"RAGNAR HAIRYPANTS!"  
"Adventurous, ruthless and greedy is he!"  
"RAGNAR HAIRYPANTS!"  
"If you don't want Ragnar a kickin' your arse..."  
"RAGNAR HAIRYPANTS!"  
"Then give him your money and jewellery of course!"  
"RAGNAR HAIRYPANTS! RAGNAR HAIRYPANTS! RAGNAR HAIR-Y PANTS!"   
Flavia and Fulvia always dissolved into giggles by the end of the song. Ivar was both pleased and puzzled by the fact that he genuinely loved Bjorn's children, and regretted the fact that he had accidentally killed Bjorn's eldest daughter in a childhood squabble that had ended in him pushing her off a bridge. Had she lived, Little Sigi would have grown into Really Big Sigi, and would probably have become a great help. Ivar wished he could have had healthy children of his own too...but then Aino's blind face popped out of the water, distracting him from his thoughts. She spouted water and giggled. "Ivar...Ivar...Ivar..." she chanted in a slow, ominous voice that sped up towards the end. Then a very large, muscular hand with exquisitely trimmed fingernails popped out of the depths and overturned Ivar's improvised inflatable raft. "BJORN!" Aino shouted, and giggled again. "YAY! DADDY'S HOME!"  
"WHAT IN HELL?" Ivar yelped. "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MOTHER LOVIN' MIND, BJORN?" Then he saw Bellona. Her belly was already quite large. "Oh, sweet Frig I'm sorry..." he said "I thought I pulled out that time!"  
Bjorn growled and kissed his brother's forehead. "We're keeping it anyway, even if it's a hermaphrodite with flippers. What bugs me is that half my villa is still infested with Kardashians!"  
"Shit!" said Ivar "I forgot about the Armenians!"  
At this point a girl of about fifteen came trotting down the steps with an armload of towels and a picnic basket. She had a sweet, slightly crooked smile, her hair was what in her homeland was called "tea coloured" and was piled up in an elaborate bun, and she wore a wide-sleeved blue silk robe and broad sash over a red underskirt that was darker at the hem, and sandals made from wood and hemp over curious bifurcated cotton socks. "Konnnichi-wa, Ivar!" she chirped. Then she saw Thorunn and screamed "Kichu-sakai onna! Ai!" and clip-clopped away as fast as she could.  
"Did you forget about HER too? Bjorn asked. "Shit, another Yidu..."  
"No, she is NOT another Yidu!" said Ivar. "Her name is Sei Shonagon, and she is from the islands of Nippon off the coast of China. Dimitri won her in a poker game and was not sure what to do with her, so he gave her to me. I want her to be my guide on my next trip East."  
"Why did she run off like that when she saw me?" asked Thorunn.  
"I think you resemble a monster from her culture's folklore," said Ivar. "She reacted the same way when she met the Seer. Don't ask her if she thinks you're pretty."  
"I won't," said Thorunn. She gestured at her veiled face. "It's a stupid question."  
"A few blemishes never spoiled a nice apple," said Bjorn, and he squeezed Thorunn's behind.  
Around them the dolphins were chattering. Dolphins are intelligent, social animals with a complex language and they navigate using sonar which penetrates flesh, so they could tell that the fetus in Bellona's womb was in fact developing quite normally.  
"Why did the larger female hairless monkey leave her pod?" Antinous asked Messalina.  
"She left because she had sex with the the little hairless monkey male and thought that the big hairless monkey would no longer like her." said Messalina.  
"Hairless monkeys are a primitive and barbaric species," said Antinous. "Why doesn't the whole pod have sex together like we do?" He swam over and nosed at Ivar's anus until Messalina became angry with him.  
"Stop doing that to him!" she said. "He doesn't like it!"


End file.
